Pigeon-Blood Red

This week it’s back to a genre I love – the gritty noir – with Pigeon-Blood Red, the first of  planned trilogy by Ed Duncan. And, as a bonus, I learned what “pigeon blood red” means!

Pigeon-Blood Red by [Duncan, Ed]

The synopsis is easy enough. Rico is an enforcer for a loan shark in Chicago. He’s very good at what he does and he has no qualms about doing it. But that’s the kicker with him: he prefers to only deal with people who have done something to deserve it. He’s a killer with a conscious, and remains a stranger to almost everyone – everyone except his fellow enforcer, Jerry, and his pseudo-girlfriend, Jean.

When Rico and Jerry drive a client, Roger, back from a meeting with their boss, Roger takes the opportunity to pocket a ruby necklace he finds in the car. Big mistake. The necklace is property of the loan shark, and Robert knows it’s a mistake he can’t be caught making. Luckily for him, his wife had planned a trip to Hawaii hoping to restart their relationship, and, while he’d initially claimed he couldn’t leave work, now he sees it as the perfect excuse to put some distance between himself and the guys he’s just stolen from.

Rico follows Robert to Hawaii, determined to reclaim the necklace – a stunning strand of color-matched, pigeon-blood rubies – and teach Robert a lesson. It all sounds so simple . . .

Of course, it’s not that simple. If it were, this book would be a whopping 10 pages and completely uneventful. Luckily for us, there’s all sorts of chaos.

There is a cast of secondary characters who play varying degrees of importance to the story, but all play their parts well. Robert’s wife is confused and blindsided by a lot of things. The friend she’s traveled with has her own secrets. They bump into an old college friend who, unluckily, decides to tag along on the night things go really crazy. But, honestly, if your world is going to get turned upside down, at least you’re in Hawaii. I’d imagine it’s a little better to fall apart surrounded by pretty scenery than, say, a poverty-stricken section of a dirty downtown. Right?

At the cepg1nter of the story is this pigeon-blood ruby necklace: it triggers the effort of retaliation against Robert, which is the basis for the book. In case you were wondering, I am not a gemologist. Yes, I know that’s very shocking to you all. But I know nothing about gemstones or precious metals or anything related to fine jewelry. So I did what my kids do when they want answers to a question: I asked my Amazon friend, Alexa, and then I used Google. As it turns out, rubies aren’t just pretty red stones. Because “pure” colors don’t typically appear in nature, for a gemstone to be a ruby it needs to be at least 51% red hued (anything less than 51% red means the stone is really a sapphire, not a ruby). Most rubies have secondary colors of orange or pink. Pigeon-blood rubies have a secondary color of purple. When a pigeon-blood ruby sits against a yellow gold setting, the yellow cancels out the blue tone of the purple color, and the stone will look pure red. So a pigeon-blood ruby is the reddest, and maybe darkest, of red rubies. Now you know! (Full credit to this very helpful little explanation: http://secretsofthegemtrade.com/?page_id=368)

 

Pigeon-Blood Red is a quick fast-paced read. There’s just enough background on the characters to understand how they think. There’s just enough context to visualize what you’re reading. And it definitely fits in with other gritty noirs I’ve read – there’s violence, there’s language, there are twists and chaos, and there’s a guy you think could be a really nice guy if you overlook how much time he spends killing people. So it definitely met that expectation for me in terms of what to expect.

I wish there hadn’t been quite so many instances of “oh, isn’t this a nice coincidence”. Running into an old friend in Hawaii? Several people barely escaping death? Being calm enough in total chaos to formulate a plan? It was a little convenient. Don’t get me wrong, all those things made it possible for the story to develop and continue, so they were necessary conveniences. But the ending seemed to wrap up very cleanly, and I wish it had been a little messier. I’ll be curious to see how Mr. Duncan continues the story into the next two books.

Overall: 7/10

* I received a copy of Pigeon-Blood Red from the author and his publicist in exchange for my honest review.

Discussion

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